Space Marauder

A Forgotten Worlds-clone probes a forgotten genre on the Game Boy Color.

I get whiplash playing this game. Not because of the break-neck pace (which isn't that swift) or the stomach-churning action (which is quite mild and settles itself without any Pepto). No, the real whip is in the throwback to 1985 NES gaming. This shooter is as dated as the hills, with ancient graphics, tempo, and sound.

Still, the release of any shooter in the 21st century is something to celebrate. Agetec and Tommo have shoveled deep into the earth to exhume the long-dead shooter genre. In memory of the days before Quake and Unreal doomed the true shooter genre to its grave, here's a game that shows the ghosts of the greats. Games like this brought you into videogaming -- can it ever be born again in the post-MGS era?

Features:

Five levels of classic shooter action

Three levels of difficulty

Password Saves

Only for Game Boy Color

Those familiar with Forgotten Worlds will be instantly in love initially with Space Marauder, if for no other reason than that it brings back the memories. You play as a jet-pack propelled Space Marauder infantryman dropped into the stronghold of an alien race determined to enslave all of humanity. Fascinatingly original plot aside, you're a gunman in a den of aliens, and the only way out is a hail of bullets.

Control in Space Marauder is similar and yet somewhat off from what you remember in Capcom and Sega's classic Forgotten Worlds. You still have the 8-way firing, and you can pick up one of three weapons and an option enhancement to fortify your free-floating craftless body. In handling the rotation of your guns, however, the games differ, and Agetec's approach seems to be off the mark. If you remember the '80s (and if you need me to sing you "I Ran" from Flock of Seagulls to get you back there, call me), you will recall that the arcade Forgotten Worlds had a rotating joystick. The Sega console versions, with less buttons and no way to make the joypad work that way, let you tap the buttons to turn your gun. Agetec's approach is to open up the gun control when not firing, and lock down the direction when the gun is shooting. It's works great, until you get knee-deep in the thick of battle, and then it goes wrong. For one, you have to stop firing, and that's death in a shooter. But even more problematic, you have to key in a direction before you start shooting again, which is a problem since you often have to tap towards an enemy when you need to keep going in the opposite direction to survive. Pro shooter fans will be able to adapt, but in Space Marauder, retreating and firing back is near impossible, and so you mostly play the game like a standard shooter -- guns facing forwards all the time.

Guns in Space Marauder are weak sauce, even by Reagan-era standards. You either get a blue bullet, a lighter blue laser, or a pink ring. Believe it or not, the pink weapon is the only one that's interesting, as it shoots through walls. The other two are just average guns. However, Agetec has good treatment of the weapon system, as the power-ups for these weapons rotate between the three options, and you will have to choose which one to power and which is best for the given situation. Each gun can be powered up to a heavier, multi-directional version of itself. None of the guns become as rad as Blazing Lazers' rings or The Guardian Legend's Fireball, but the need to choose the right gun for what's ahead is a smart play.

The way secrets are opened up in the game is also very well done. As you blast your way through the game, you'll come across stars that will open bonus sections of the game, and what's awesome is that these sections are weaved right into the level you're playing. A side-scrolling section will all of the sudden turn vertical or slip back the opposite direction, changing everything about the way you fight through that section. Sometimes you'll be making a move for a power-up, and suddenly find the screen shifting the complete opposite direction with gun embattlements hovering right over your face. If you miss the bonus, the game just rolls on like there's nothing more to see, so until you find all of the game's bonus stars, playing through each level is a new experience every time.

And yet graphically and dynamically, the game is ten years too late. The game plods along like a slow bus ride through Arizona. There's no hustle, and even though the higher difficulty levels get tough, the only reason you'll ever lose in the game isn't the frenetic pace -- you will die simply because your shooter chops are rusty. Granted, the sprites and color schemes are perfectly matched against the muted background, so you don't lose bullets and enemies in the background like some other bad shooters. Even so, the enemies come in about six varieties, and they keep coming until you're bored to tears shooting down simple pixels of ships. Enemy bullets are red dots. You're supposed to collect pink dots for bonus points. And other than that, that's all there is to the graphics and gameplay. Still, it all runs smoothly, with average-sized bosses and smooth framerate, with absolutely no flicker to be seen...

The Verdict

Wait, did I just say that? Flicker? No game has had multiple-sprite flicker practically since Miyamoto actually wrote his own code. That's how old this game feels. 900 of these were released on the NES in a single year. Space Marauder does everything, it doesn't do it particularly well. It's a Welter Weight contender with two punches to throw and ten minutes of ring experience.

But to its credit, nobody, and I mean nobody has anything going on in the shooter realm these days. These old NES shooters were a dime a dozen in the '80s, but if you were one of those game rats, you spent every spare dime you could on them. Games like Space Megaforce, MUSHYA, Natsume's S.C.A.T.... This is what gaming was ten years ago. This is a game where there isn't even a single corporate logo screen to bore you to death before getting to the Title Screen. That's old school, and for many, those were better days. Space Marauder isn't a killer shooter, but if you're a shooter fan, it's all you've got left.